Man I understand sensitivity, but getting preemptively mad that someone might mention that in 4 years a really old guy could die of old age seems weird to me.
I'm leaning towards "no". His fragile ego will have taken two nasty blows in a row. Plus in four years he'll be even older and more fragile, and it's already pretty bad.
If I'm right, I'm sure he'll endorse some other maga-clown instead.
Considering how many failed businesses he has under his name, I doubt failure is enough to hurt his ego. He'll just make something up so he can pretend he's still a success. Like how he claims he won the last election despite it being yet another failure to add to the pile.
I don't think he'll endorse anyone except maybe for pay. And I don't think anyone will want his endorsement. Most of his endorsed primary candidates failed (as I recall, valid to double check that). It may not be a mark of death, but it doesn't look like it helps.
I think he's really good at compartmentalization and it wouldn't surprise me if deep down he does think the election was stolen from him. I also don't think he'll be satisfied being on the political sidelines so he'll run as long as he's able.
No because in a video I just saw when he was speaking to a group of christians he said this is the election you need to vote in because when he is president there will be no more voting. He said this three times just to reinforce it.
Obviously just locker room talk. People are just taking his comments about ending democracy and becoming a dictator on day one out of context. He’s speaking metaphorically.
I'd like to believe that congress would never allow him to change the constitution and subvert due process, but you just never know what might happen with this guy.
Tbh, I hope so. I think the chances of his winning decline with every cycle that is a loss. But, his ability to split a vote is retained to some extent. So:
if he runs as the GOP candidate again, he's more likely to lose. If the GOP is split about it, he's more likely to have a split vote due to another conservative candidate opting into the race on a third ticket (this may not happen, in which case, he's just less likely to win anyway due to previous losses, increased age, etc).
if he isn't the GOP candidate but still runs, he's extremely unlikely to win but could be a crazy vote split.
I think any sane person would not run again. Trump might, though.
Thing is, the RNC is cleptocratically his now and will be for a while. Other than that I'd hope for similar things as most people are commenting here. It will be bonkers either way until he stops breathing and then some.
He'll be dead by then. His father lived to 95 or something but Trump proudly admits he doesn't exercise and he eats like shit. The best healthcare in the world can only keep a guy like that alive for so long before a lifetime of bad habits catch up to him.
Fun fact: Trump once claimed the human body is akin to a battery, and that exercising only decreases our lifespan. I wish I was joking.
His views on exercise are indeed bizarre. Apparently the moron thinks all humans have a finite amount of energy like a battery, which is why he never exercises.
I'm far more concerned about the rise of Nazism and Monarchism in the USA. Even if we never have a Republican in any governing office again and the country continues to move further and further left, America has a lot of work to do to ensure these forms of tyrrany are never even considered as a viable alternative to Democracy.
The fact that these forms of governance survive in the hearts and minds of people is an indicator of a larger and more complex societal failing that spans the entire history of America. This is not some strange short term flash in the pan of Nazism and Authoritarianism, it is an insidious and vile tradition passed down from generation to generation, and we have only staunched it's slow cancerous growth by publicly shaming those who voice these views publicly. Obviously this has proven ineffective.
I think a more important question than whether one particularly sad excuse for a sad sack of shit may run for president again, is how do we make sure the Trump dynasty, and all dynasties, fade into obscurity until the last remnants of their legacy is a footnote that indicates we lived in a time period when humans, due to many generations of hoisting up those with the most lust for power into positions of power, nearly destroyed themselves. How do we make that happen?
Facism - and that is what Trumpism ultimately is - has always been fuelled by declining social security and rising social inequality. This provides the matrix for an ideology of us vs. them that is ultimately a distribution battle in a declining economy. Unless the USA (as well as many other nations esp. in Europe) solves this issue sufficiently well for the people at large, I see little hope for Trump or any of his clones to disappear from the political stage. That is also why the right is so eager to frame any initiative that aims to mitigate social precariousness as radical left/communism/socialism.
Doubt it, his decline in the last 8 years have been incredible. If he were a family member we would have been looking for professional help a long time ago.
Can't imagine he'd be able to remain aware of his surroundings in 2 more years
Even though I’d like him to drop off the face of the Earth, I kinda hope he does run. He’ll be even less coherent. His insane rambling will be worse. He’ll have to run as an independent, because Republicans won’t bet on a losing horse again - and he definitely would lose. It’ll be a major public humiliation, and he deserves as many of those as possible.
Whether he runs again is not the right question. The council for national policy, an extreme right organization, is behind trumpism, supreme court justices trump nominated, and project 2025 which has been around since Reagan era but with different names. They will choose a different candidate as their wrecking ball who is younger and as fiery, unethical, without principles and an "outsider" as trump represent. Whether it's JD Vance or someone else.
Agreed. A lot of money has been spent on crafting agenda and shaping public and party opinions. Although malicious, Project 2025 seems carefully considered. I assume the wealthy investors bankrolling the project have considered Trump's mortality as well.
Well he doesn't do anything he doesn't have to and since you only have so much energy or something the people who exercise or some shit will die earlier because they used themselves up.
A not verbatim speech from trump about exorcize and why he doesn't.
You'd think it would be a win, but honestly Trump is a clown. More "centrists" who detest Trump might rally around someone like DeSantis, that's what I'm afraid of.
He'll either be in jail, in a home for dementia treatment, or defaulted on the half billion in Russian loans and accidentally fell out of a window. So my answer is a solid, no.
The elderly tend to have some pretty severe mental decline from incarceration. He's already spiraling. I'm not sure there will be much left of him to run if he's in prison.
I think with all the footage of Trump, and his shallow personality, an AI will be trained to impersonate him and we'll never be rid of him. I'm sure techbros are working on their animatronic Trump right now.
I don’t think so. Republicans are both spineless cowards and vicious bullies. When the Trump fever finally breaks from losing again as well as his legal troubles, expect the backlash to be swift and bloody.
I think it's unlikely hell be alive in 2028. The problem is the people that support him now, will be. They'll try again and again to get the things they want passed. If it's not now, they're patient enough to wait. They won't stop unless they're forced by judicial action and these people are behind bars. It's not trump that's the biggest issue. It's the evil people behind him.
I hope so. He'll likely run against Harris again, and assuming she doesn't tank the economy I don't see how he manages a win.
The longer he clings to power, the longer the GOP go without legitimate representation that isn't MAGA grifters. Looking at right-wing populism elsewhere across the world, you'll see that when the figurehead loses power they often don't have a successor lined up - and those that do end up in the shadow of the person that won't stop clinging to the idea that they are the "chosen one".
Trump will ALWAYS be able to Run! He's the FASTEST runner! Some people say he should be in the Olympics at running but he's too nice to let those Younger Folks have all the Glory. Trump could be DEAD and his Legs will STILL be kicking and trying to Run right out of his Grave! He's in the BEST shape of ANYONE probably in the Entire World!
I doubt it. While some people think he'll be dead by then, I'm inclined to suspect not. However given his observed mental decline, I suspect that he'll be even less coherent 4 years from now. He's currently 78, and would therefore be 82 by then (birthday June 14th 1946). He's already got a number of age-related medical issues, such as needing to wear adult diapers and said mental decline.
Behind the scenes is be surprised if he didn't have some cardiac problems, even minor ones, and thus was on something for them, such as blood thinners or cholesterol meds. I don't know if it's been verified that he's on Ozempic, but he sure has lost a lot of weight lately and I don't think it's from exercising.
I do expect that he's never going to shut up though. If, hopefully, he loses this election, he's not going to just evaporate. People are still going to give a damn about what his opinion is and who he endorses, especially his cult of followers, but also the less overtly extreme conservatives.
As a general rule, cults built around a singular person, AKA cults of personality, tend to crumble into dust and fade into history once that personality is gone. However, some cults outlive that person because someone else is there to pick up the slack and reform things just enough to make a going concern of the cult. That's how Christianity started, that's how Protestantism started, and if you look into it, just about every other major, lasting "religion" that had branched off of the Christianity family tree. It also goes for political, cultural, and social movements, which can be cult-like without the religious aspect being an absolute requirement, although ir can be very strongly intertwined. I don't know where the Cult of Trump will go once old age finally catches up to him, I think it's likely that it'll be reabsorbed into christo-facism because the two feed off of each other pretty strongly.
Martin Luther didn’t have a cult of personality, he more had grievances, legitimate and otherwise. I think one of the best examples though is L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige.
I think the big thing here is it’s both a cult of personality and an outlet for the cultic milleau that was brewing before it found him. The satanic panic found new life in Qanon. But also I don’t think that that portion alone is powerful enough to outlive him
He's nearing that point. If he loses any steam, the far right will bail on him, and his health is already bad. Plus he has started to encounter financial issues, as we learned a few months ago.
If he loses he’ll be weaker than he’s been in a long time. I don’t see how he staves off the legal and political challenges he’ll be quickly inundated with. I think this election really means his survival or ruin.
They'll probably attempt an even more blatant coup than last time. If we're lucky it will be a shitshow and fail so miserably that it de-legitimizes the entire christofascist ideology and destroys the republican party for good.
His ego will make him try over and over again. But I’m not sure if he can. Shithead is getting older and also his people started shooting at him. He probably won’t make it into a third fourth election.
Not at all. The guys designing the early drafts of the applicable laws seem to never have considered a convicted felon persuading millions and millions of people that it, or his active prison sentence, doesn't matter because PwN tHe LiBs. Frankly, how could they?
I hope Harris wins, but the world-economy is being flushed, with exponential-force, down the sewer, & NO incumbent survives that kind of thing ( backlash-vote ),
AND as the book "The Big Sort" apparently explains, the cultural-segregation that mass-media push so hard creates intolerance.
Which, of course, when escalated by mass media of various alignments, keeps amplifying ( feedback-loops ) until .. genociding.
The locking-Anglos-out in Quebec ( we no longer have any access to goverment phone-services in English ) is simply an earlier stage of divide-and-genocide than whan the US is in, but .. it'll get there.
Whether unconsciously or consciously, the heads of Quebec are committed to turning Canada into another Russia/Ukraina, Israel/Palestine, Deep-South racism kind of thing, in a generation or 2, for whatever they win/gain in accomplishing that.
IF Trump doesn't win 2024, then Civil War begins in 2028, +/- a very-few months, & continues until the US is butchered-carrion.
It's far too late to save the US: the real problem is that Animals-and-Tribes-Time mode of Kahneman1 mind ( imprint->reaction ) has already successfully highjacked the country.
As .. Glubb, was it? realized, empires die at about 2.5-centuries.
There's a book "How to Hide an Empire" on the American Empire, so anybody who wants to pretend that all the machiavellian interventions ( remember when Iraq's intervention backfired, because they didn't want to be a puppet-state, & wanted self-determination? That was noticed openly in some news item or other, back then.. I'd not have clued-in to it, on my own, buth then, through the years.. there are puppets of lobbies, aren't there? & these lobbies work to enforce that accountability never get near them.. .. whatever: if humankind isn't viable, & Natural Selection extinguishes humankind, then humankind's herdbeast games, bullying & majority-domination, & minority-beaten/broken, same as in herds anywhere .. we were supposed to be upright-human, you know? if we failed The Great Filter, well, then too bad: we earn what we earn.. )
So, the identity of the ruling-class has sooo completely mismatched the actuality of the empire, now, that it's incapable of surviving.
Same as Rome, Britain's empire, etc..
12-13 generations, & .. kaput.
The Big ( cultural ) Sort seems to be the mechanism, but DarkHexad { narcissism / machiavelianism / sociopathy-psychopathy / nihilism / sadism } is cultivated, if not directly-grown, by privilege-caste, & .. well, that's a feedback-loop too, isn't it?
Concentration-of-privilege, concentration-of-wealth, which "says" "trickle-down economics", but is gaslighting..
which "says" "charity", but .. when you see that literally millions of DONATED $ are pocketed by the executives of the US's United Way .. that woke socialist feminist convicted-felon Yehoshua "Jesus" ( Iosa, in Roman/Latin, I've been told by an actual Roman-born person ) benJoseph already laced into fake-charity, 2 millenia ago..
Part of the problem is that it isn't a single problem: it's actually a fractal and chaotic anti-fragile/robust mesh of problems, which all mutually-reinforce..
Narcissism conserves "validity" & excludes all it can, to prove how "exclusive" its "validity" is, right? Anti-compassion. Sociopathy is .. exactly that, isn't it?
Feedback-loop..
How can "trickle-down economics", or "compassion for the privileged-caste/class's inferiors" ( note the contempt in their "charity".. I was born into the upper-middle-class, & it took 7+ years of accumulated homelessness for me to crack the identity-underlying-ego that that ideology/prejudice, as all "race", "class", & "gender" is, in social-process, enough for me to get to some kind of objective-honestly, more than a decade later.. )
The action->reaction cycle cannot be stopped, postponed, or prevented: US of A is finished.
I hope that Kamala Harris makes this last "calm before the storm" be as spiritually-thriving as she can, enforcing an increase in state-integrity, against lobbies' undermining of everything, but it doesn't change the pogrom/tantrum that'll destroy about 2/3 of the US's population in .. approximately 7y from when it begins ( that is just one of the natural human-cycles, because it's a cycle that our unconscious-mind "works" at: it's too "stuck" to work quicker.. )
You know how sometimes you have a grandparent or relative or friend or other-family, someone whom you really care about, & cancer/whatever's killing them?
& there's nothing you can do??
Objectively, that's what's happening with the US: it's fatal, it's implacable, only our relationship with its process, & outcome, & the way we make the process enact, can we change..
We can't prevent the death.
We can't prevent the reaping of the consequences of our previous-generations' "sowing" carelessness in education, or in accommodating the "surrender" ( technical-only, not honest/total ) of the KKK/Confederates, who've now done to much of the country exactly what McDonnell Douglass's beancounter-culture did to Boeing ( a "reverse takeover" )..
What has been sown, is going to be reaped, to use the Christian rendition of what the older religions call "karma".
end of Part 1, as the Lemmy character-count blocked my commenting with the whole thing in a single entry..
Here's an example, which is different-enougn in context, that it becomes culturally easier to see the forest & the trees:
IF the U.N. had enforced that in Palestine NO political/ideological warping/deforming of ANY civil service, of ANY social service, of ANY regulatory-process or rule, of ANY judging, enforcing, education, of ANYthing,
essentially force-suffocating ideological ( Kahneman1 mind, mere-animal mind, read "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman & see that the whole world is forcing itself into an ocean-of-tantrum/pogrom, as ClimatePunctuation begins ramping-up through the next few decades )..
force-suffocating ideological-highjacking & ideological-undermining, & holding that force-suffocating in-place for a hard minimum of 2 generations, possibly 4..
( any "leaks" that accommodate ideological warping to displace considered-reason/Kahneman2 mind massively compromise/undermine the force-suffocation of that unconscious-mind-current which wants total-dominion of our lives/world .. and we let it have that dominion!
Foolish idiocy, which costs lives.. )
So, after hard-disallowing of Kahneman1/imprint->reaction/mere-animal mind's rule for enough generations, then the ideology/prejudice ( 2 sides of the same "coin" ) .. is force retired from authority, & the objective-generations have filled-in the roles, & .. then, eventually, a tipping-point is crossed, where it becomes self-sustaining/robust, see?
Anyways, Israel AND Hamas both wouldn't allow that, in Palestine.
As I've said before, what Hamas did in their assault of Israel was very DarkHexad: they sociopathically sacrificed all Palestinians for sake of the inevitable genociding-reaction from Israel, which, of course, will enforce that the Muslim world will focus until its reaction to Isreal's genociding becomes absolute, & then .. & then the prophecy in the Christian bible, that Israel gets annihilated comes true. Sometime before 2036 it'll happen, probably in the 2028-2036 period..
The "standing in the holy place" of Daniel .. that was his inner place, his place of Faithing on what he knew as G-D, what I'd call OceanOfAllAwakeSouls, since my whole cosmology is different, but that particular infinity is itself..
Anyone who stands in earned holiness within their meaning ( a hormonic of meditation, or, to phrase the same suchness from a different "angle", a lower-harmonic of G-D: it's itself, differnet cultures label things differently.
It doesn't matter that Daniel was Jewish, or Atisha was definitely not, culturally: each earned some remarkable truths, by "standing in the holy 'place' within their deeper meaning" and it's the same for all: earn it, & it's one's own meaning.
Fail to bother, & it isn't, see? : )
So, Hamas sacrificed all Palestinians' world, for sake of a genociding that would happen later, in reaction against Israel's genociding of Palestine & Palestinians..
Which is more-machiavellian? Isreal of Hamas?
Both, sadly.
Which is more sociopathic/psychopathic?
Both, sadly..
you get the picture.
There's a "little" ebb/flow, which makes it look like the herd-beast ( our unconscious-ignorance nature ) sometimes is stronger, sometimes is weaker,
but it's actually that our underlying limbic/herdbeast nature is ebbing & flowing in seeming present, or seeming dominant, but it's just the appearance that's changing, not the underlying substance.
Steven Pinker foolishly bet on the appearance, in "The Better Angels of our Nature", it looks like.
He holds that violent-aggression just diminished sooo fundamentally, that that trend must continue!
No, he was looking at the slope of a "wave", & falsely-extrapolating that the wave wouldn't "return".
Until the tantrum/pogrom is finished, whether any survivors live, or not, our unconscious-mind's ignorance is committed to BREAKING all our world/lives/everything to its dominion/lordhood..
Same as any toddler.
The fact that our ignorance can outright-kill the entire biosphere, now, isn't sufficient to cause upright/maturity/transformation-in-our-unconscious-substance: only experience-induced-understanding can,
& the only experience which can induce/enforce understanding of our ignorance-nature is.. action->reaction.. being beaten to near-death by it, until its force forces our unconscious-mind-substance to transform from impenetrable-ignorance to .. among the few survivors of The Great Filter, if there are any .. transforms into a kind of "sublimation", changing humankind's survivors into people who ARE fundamentally different from our generation..
Russia/Ukraina, Israel/Palestine, Deep-South-white-supremacists-and-"christian"-supremacists/all-who-aren't-white-supremacists/"christian"-supremacists, Anglophones or Francophones against the other, Yugoslavia, if you're old enough to remember that, South Africa's apartheid, .. it's the same damn fundamental-script, just with little variations, for centuries & centuries & centuries of our history: WE HAVEN'T CHANGED yet.
And THAT is The Actual Problem(tm).
ClimatePunctuation's simply going to exponentially explode the intensity, the number-of-factors, the violent-reaction-to-food-insecurity, etc..
The Perfect Storm, iow.
See how the butchering of Russia by Putin is working? Civil-rights less & less..
same as in Israel..
same as in the Deep South..
same as in the polarization in Europe, with the far-right growing strength to re-create nazism's possession of it..
Asia's got its equivalents, Africa too ( did you know that Mussolini stole fascism from Marcus Garvey, a Black African nationalist? he had no problem with collaborating with the American white-supremacists: segregation was wanted by both, right? )
Until human-nature is force-changed, profoundly/fundamentally, then the cause of all this world's problems remains in control of the world, & the effects can appear "better" or "worse", but the unbroken-toddler's still driving our bus..
Force-growing-oneself up into fundamental uprightness, facing into karma, seems the only sane method, to me..
At least one can change one's own Eternity, then, right?
if everyone else among this world rejects self-transformation, because "the kingdom of god is without", as the materialists are certain, as the parable of "the prodigal son" symbolically-represented..
but it isn't without: it's within, & the only way to earn it is to conquer one's own unconscious..
and that is waht humankind's ignorance won't allow, or tolerate..
correcting/removing the cause of all our world's major problems..
So, Natural Selection is going to enforce the issue into significance in the rest of this century.
Even if he could (somehow) I'd doubt it - a lot of people seem to completely ignore the fact that the far-right critters simply isn't coming out of the woodwork for Trump now in the same way that they did in 2016. The reason for that is simple - Trump dropped them like a rotten potato the minute he walked into the Waffle House pretty much at the same time they were being beaten in the streets by antifa. They know that Trump is not their boy.
He still has his core of MAGAs, of course - but without the neo-nazis and the KKK doing their little "sturm-und-drang" schtick for Trump in the streets, Trump is going to be less of a "Great White Hope" and more "Great Orange Farce"... and this would be far worse for Trump in 2028 than it is now.
I dont understand how it is his choice to do so or not. Its the voters who decide. If he doesn't have the backing he shouldn't be able to. Its not up to him
"almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I think she never got more than 20%, which is insane for any challenger to someone "incumbant-like", but she didn't come close to almost beating him.
I suspect that if he loses again, maybe the republican party gets actually serious about rebuking him, like they kind of did after January 6th for a minute, and then maybe a bit more after their embarrassing 2022 results.
After the way that DeSantis went after Disney just to prove a point that he's in charge, I don't think corporations would let him become POTUS. He'd be too dangerous to their bottom line.